Chapter XI: Part 11

Small singing birds, and even butterflies, (as I have myself witnessed
in the Pacific,) are often met with at great distances from the shore,
during storms blowing off land. In a similar manner insects are
involuntarily carried into the higher regions of the atmosphere, to an
elevation of 17,000 to 19,000 feet above the plains. The light bodies
of these insects are borne upwards by the vertically ascending
currents of air caused by the heated condition of the earth’s surface.
M. Boussingault, an admirable chemist, who ascended the Gneiss
Mountains of Caracas, while holding the appointment of Professor in
the newly established Mining Academy at Santa Fé de Bogotá, witnessed,
during his ascent to the summit of the Silla, a phenomenon which
confirmed in a most remarkable manner this vertical ascent of air. He
and his companion, Don Mariano de Rivero, observed at noon a number of
luminous whitish bodies rise from the valley of Caracas to the summit
of the Silla, an elevation of 5755 feet, and then sink towards the
adjacent sea coast. This phenomenon was uninterruptedly prolonged for
a whole hour, when it was discovered that the bodies, at first
mistaken for a flock of small birds, were a number of minute balls of
grass-haums. Boussingault sent me some of this grass, which was
immediately recognised by Professor Kunth as a species of Vilfa, a
genus of grass which together with Agrostis is of frequent occurrence
in the provinces of Caracas and Cumana. It was the _Vilfa tenacissima_
of our _Synopsis Plantarum æquinoctialium Orbis Novi_, t. i. p. 205.
Saussure found butterflies on Mont Blanc, and Ramond observed them in
the solitudes around the summit of Mont Perdu. When MM. Bonpland,
Carlos Montufar, and myself, on the 23rd of June, 1802, ascended the
eastern declivity of Mount Chimborazo, to a height of 19,286 feet, and
where the barometer had fallen to 14·84 inches, we found winged
insects buzzing around us. We recognised them to be Diptera,
resembling flies, but it was impossible to catch these insects
standing on the rocky ledges (_cuchilla_), often less than a foot in
breadth, and between masses of snow precipitated from above. The
elevation at which we observed these insects was almost the same as
that in which the naked trachytic rock, which projected from the
eternal snows around, exhibited the last traces of vegetation in
Lecidea geographica. These insects were flying at an elevation of
18,225 feet, or nearly 2660 feet higher than the summit of Mont Blanc:
and somewhat below this height, at an elevation of 16,626 feet, and
therefore also above the region of snow, M. Bonpland saw yellow
butterflies flying close to the ground. The mammalia which live
nearest to the region of perpetual snow, are, in the Swiss Alps, the
hybernating marmot, and a very small field-mouse, (Hypudæus nivalis,)
described by Martius, which on the Faulhorn lays up, almost under the
snow, a store of the roots of phanerogamic alpine plants.[JC] The
opinion prevalent in Europe, that the beautiful rodent, the
Chinchilla, whose soft and glossy fur is so much esteemed, is found in
the highest mountain regions of Chili, is an error. The Chinchilla
laniger (Gray) lives only in a mild lower zone, and does not advance
further south than the parallel of 35°.[JD]

Whilst among our European Alps, Lecideas, Parmelias, and Umbilicarias
but scantily clothe with a few coloured patches those rocks that are
not wholly covered with snow, we found in the Andes, at elevations of
13,700 to nearly 15,000 feet, some phanerogamic plants which we were
the first to describe; as for instance, the woolly species of
Fraylejon. (Culcitium nivale, C. rufescens, and C. reflexum, Espeletia
grandiflora, and E. argentea), Sida pichinchensis, Ranunculus
nubigenus, R. Gusmanni with red or orange-coloured flowers, the small
moss-like umbelliferous plant, Myrrhis andicola, and Fragosa
arctioides. On the declivity of the Chimborazo, the Saxifraga
Boussingaulti, described by Adolph Brongniart, grows beyond the limits
of perpetual snow on loose blocks of stone at an elevation of 15,770
feet above the level of the sea, and not at 17,000 as has been stated
in two admirable English journals.[JE] This Saxifrage, discovered by
Boussingault, must therefore be regarded as the highest growing
phanerogamic plant in the world.

The vertical height of Chimborazo is, according to my measurement,
21,422 feet.[JF] This result is a mean between those which have been
given by the French and Spanish Academicians. The principal
differences do not here depend on different assumptions for the
refraction, but on a difference in reducing the measured line to the
level of the sea. This reduction can only be made in the Andes by the
barometer, and hence every so-called trigonometric measurement must
also necessarily be a barometric one, whose result will vary according
to the different formulæ employed. Owing to the enormous mass of the
mountain chain, we can only obtain very small angles of altitude, when
the greater portion of the whole height has to be measured
trigonometrically, and the observation is made at some low and distant
point near the plain or the level of the sea. It is on the other hand
extremely difficult to obtain a convenient base line, as the space
that is to be determined barometrically increases with every step we
advance towards the mountain. These obstacles have to be encountered
by every traveller who on the high table-lands, which surround the
summit of the Andes, selects a spot for performing a geodetic
operation. On the pumice-covered plain of Tapia, to the west of the
Rio Chambo, at a height of 9477 feet, barometrically determined, I
measured the Chimborazo. The Llanos de Luisa, and more especially the
plain of Sisgun, whose elevation is 12,150 feet, would yield greater
angles of altitude. I had on one occasion made every preparation
necessary for the measurement of Mount Chimborazo, from the plain of
Sisgun, when the summit of the mountain was suddenly shrouded in a
dense cloud.

Some hypothetical suggestions, regarding the probable derivation of
the name of the far-famed “Chimborazo,” may not be wholly unwelcome to
etymologists. The district in which the mountain is situated is called
Chimbo, a word which La Condamine[JG] derives from _chimpani_, to
cross a river. “Chimboraço” means, according to him, “the snow of the
opposite bank,” from the fact of a brook being crossed at the village
of Chimbo, in sight of the huge snow-covered mountain. (In the Quichua
language _chimpa_ signifies the opposite bank or side; _chimpani_ to
cross a river, bridge, &c.) Several natives of the province of Quito
assured me that Chimborazo meant simply the snow of Chimbo. In
Carguairazo we meet with the same termination, and it would appear
that “razo” is a provincial word. The Jesuit Holguin, whose excellent
vocabulary[JH] I possess, is not acquainted with the word razo. The
genuine term for snow is ritti. On the other hand, my friend,
Professor Buschmann, an admirable linguist, remarks that in the
Chinchaysuyo dialect, (employed north of Cuzco as far as Quito and
Pasto) raju, the _j_ being apparently guttural, signifies snow.[JI] As
chimpa and chimpani do not well suit on account of the _a_, we may
seek a definite meaning for the first portion of the name of the
mountain and of the village Chimbo, in the Quichua word “chimpu,”
which is used to express a coloured thread or fringe (señal de lana,
hilo ó borlilla de colores); the redness of the sky (arreboles), and
the halo round the sun and moon. The name of the mountain might be
thus derived from this word, without reference to the district or
village. At all events, whatever may be the etymology of the word
Chimborazo, it should be written in the Peruvian manner Chimporazo, as
the Peruvians have no _b_ in their alphabet.

May not the name of this colossal mountain be wholly independent of
the Inca language, and have come down from a bygone age? The Inca or
Quichua language had not been introduced long prior to the Spanish
invasion into the kingdom of Quito, where the now wholly extinct
Puruay language had been previously used. The names of other
mountains, as Pichincha, Ilinissa, and Cotopaxi, are wholly devoid of
meaning in the language of the Incas, and are therefore undoubtedly of
higher antiquity than the introduction of the worship of the sun, and
of the court-language of the rulers of Cuzco. The names of mountains
and rivers belong in all regions of the earth to the most ancient and
authentic relics of languages; and my brother, Wilhelm von Humboldt,
in his investigations into the former distribution of the Iberian
races, has made ingenious use of these names. A singular and
unexpected statement has recently been made,[JJ] “that the Incas,
Tupac Yupanqui, and Huayna Capac, were astonished on their first
conquest of Quito, to find a dialect of their Quichua language in use
among the natives.” Prescott, however, seems to regard this as a very
bold assertion.[JK]

If we could suppose the pass of St. Gothard, Mount Athos, or the Rigi,
piled on the summit of the Chimborazo, we should have the elevation
which is at present ascribed to the Dhawalagiri in the Himalaya. The
geologist who regards the interior of our planet from a more general
point of view, and to whom not the directions, but the relative
heights of the rocky projections, which we designate mountain chains,
appear but as phenomena of little importance, will not be astonished
if at some future period mountain summits should be discovered between
the Himalaya and the Altai, which should surpass in height those of
Dhawalagiri and Djawahir as much as these exceed that of
Chimborazo.[JL] The great height to which the snow-line recedes _in
summer_ on the northern declivity of the Himalaya, owing to the heat
radiated from the elevated plateaux in Central Asia, renders the
mountain, notwithstanding that it is situated in 29 to 30½° north
lat., as accessible as are the Peruvian Andes in the region of the
tropics. Captain Gerard has moreover recently ascended the Tarhigang
as high, if not 117 feet higher,[JM] than I ascended the Chimborazo.
Unfortunately, as I have elsewhere more fully shown, these mountain
ascents, beyond the line of perpetual snow, however they may engage
the curiosity of the public, are of very little scientific utility.

Footnote 72:

p. 210—“_The Condor, that giant among vultures_.”

I have elsewhere[JN] given the natural history of the Condor, which
before my travels had been variously misstated. The name is properly
_Cuntur_ in the Inca language; _Mañque_ among the Araucanes in Chili;
_Sarcoramphus Condor_ according to Duméril. I sketched the head of
this bird from life, of the natural size, and had my drawing engraved.
Next to the Condor, the Lämmergeier of Switzerland, and the _Falco
destructor_ (Daud.), probably Linnæus’ _Falco Harpyia_, are the
largest of all _flying_ birds.

The region which may be regarded as the common resort of the Condor,
begins at the elevation of Mount Etna. It embraces atmospheric strata
which are from 10,000 to 19,000 feet above the level of the sea.
Humming birds also, which in their summer flights advance as far as
61° north lat. on the western coast of America, and are on the other
hand found in the Archipelago of the Tierra del Fuego, were seen by
Von Tschudi in Puna at an elevation of 14,600 feet.[JO] There is a
pleasure in comparing the largest and the smallest of the feathered
inhabitants of the air. The largest among the Condors found in the
Cordilleras, near Quito, measure nearly 15 feet across the expanded
wings, and the smaller ones 8½ feet. This size, and the visual angle
at which the birds are seen vertically above one’s head, afford an
idea of the enormous height to which the Condor soars in a clear sky.
A visual angle of four minutes, for instance, would give a vertical
elevation of 7330 feet. The cavern (Mackay) of Antisana, opposite the
mountain of Chussulongo, and where we measured the birds soaring over
the chain of the Andes, lies at an elevation of nearly 16,000 feet
above the surface of the Pacific; the absolute height which the Condor
reached must therefore be 23,273 feet, a height at which the barometer
scarcely stands at 12·7 inches; but which, however, does not exceed
that of the loftiest summit of the Himalaya. It is a remarkable
physiological phenomenon that the same bird, which wheels for hours
together through these highly rarefied regions, should be able
suddenly, as for instance on the western declivity of the volcano of
Pichincha, to descend to the sea-shore, and thus in the course of a
few hours traverse, as it were, all climates. At heights of 23,000
feet and upwards the membranous air-sacs of the Condor must undergo a
remarkable degree of inflation after being filled in lower regions of
the atmosphere.

Ulloa, more than a hundred years ago, expressed his astonishment that
the Vulture of the Andes could soar at heights where the pressure of
the atmosphere was less than fifteen inches.[JP] An opinion was at
that time entertained, from the analogy of experiments made with the
air-pump, that no animal could exist under this slight amount of
atmospheric pressure. I have myself, as has already been mentioned,
seen the barometer fall to 14·85 inches on the Chimborazo; and my
friend, M. Gay-Lussac, breathed for a quarter of an hour an atmosphere
in which the pressure was only 12·9 inches. It must be admitted that
man, when wearied by muscular exertion, finds himself in a state of
painful exhaustion at such elevations; but in the Condor, the
respiratory process seems to be performed with equal facility under a
pressure of 30 or of 13 inches. This bird probably raises itself
_voluntarily_ to a greater height from the surface of our earth than
any other living creature. I use the expression “voluntarily,” since
small insects and siliceous-shelled infusoria are frequently borne to
greater elevations by a rising current of air. It is probable that the
Condor flies even higher than the above calculations would appear to
show. I remember observing near the Cotopaxi, in the pumice plain of
Suniguaicu, at an elevation of 14,471 feet above the level of the sea,
this bird soaring at such a height above my head that it appeared like
a black speck. But what is the smallest angle under which faintly
illumined objects can be distinguished? Their form (linear extension)
exercises a great influence on the minimum of this angle. The
transparency of the mountain air is so great under the equator, that
in the province of Quito, as I have elsewhere stated, the white cloak
(_poncho_) of a horseman may be distinguished with the naked eye at a
horizontal distance of 89,664 feet, and therefore under an angle of
thirteen seconds. It was my friend Bonpland whom we observed, from the
pleasant country-seat of the Marques de Selvalegre, moving along a
black rocky precipice on the volcano of Pichincha. Lightning
conductors, being thin elongated objects, are visible, as Arago has
observed, from the greatest distances and under the smallest angles.

The account I have given in my Monograph of the Condor (_Zoologie_,
pp. 26–45) of the habits of this powerful bird in the mountain
districts of Quito and Peru has been confirmed by a more recent
traveller, Gay, who has explored the whole of Chili, and described it
in his admirable work, _Historia fisica y politica de Chile_. This
bird which, singularly enough, like the Lamas, Vicuñas, Alpacas and
Guanacos, is not found beyond the equator in New Granada, penetrates
as far south as the Straits of Magellan. In Chili, as in the elevated
plateaux of Quito, the Condors, which usually live in pairs, or even
alone, congregate in flocks for the purpose of attacking lambs and
calves, or seizing on young Guanacos (Guanacillos). The havoc annually
committed by the Condor among the herds of sheep, goats and cattle, as
well as among the wild vicuñas, alpacas and guanacos of the chain of
the Andes is very considerable. The Chilians assert that this bird
when in captivity can endure hunger for forty days; when in a free
state, however, its voracity is excessive, and it then, like the
vulture, feeds by preference on carrion.

The mode of catching these birds, by an inclosure of palisades such as
I have already described, is as successful in Chili as in Peru, for
the bird after being rendered heavy from excess of food is obliged to
run a short distance with half-extended wings before it can take
flight. A dead ox which is already in an incipient state of
decomposition, is strongly inclosed with palisades, within which
narrow space the Condors throng together; being unable, as already
observed, to fly on account of the excess of food which they have
devoured, and impeded in their run by the palisades, these birds are
either killed by the natives with clubs, or are caught alive by the
lasso. The Condor was represented as a symbol of strength on the
coinage of Chili immediately after the first declaration of political
independence.[JQ]

The different species of Gallinazos, which are much more considerable
in point of numbers than the Condors, are also far more useful than
the latter in the great economy of Nature for destroying and removing
animal substances that are becoming decomposed, and thus purifying the
atmosphere in the neighbourhood of human dwellings. In tropical
America, I have sometimes seen seventy or eighty of these creatures
collected round a dead ox; and I am able, as an eye-witness, to
confirm the fact that has of late erroneously been called in question
by ornithologists, that the appearance of one single king-vulture (who
is not larger than the Gallinazos) is sufficient to put a whole
assemblage of these birds to flight. No contest ever takes place; but
the Gallinazos (two species of which, (Cathartes urubu and C. aura,)
have been confounded together by an unfortunately fluctuating
nomenclature) are intimidated by the sudden appearance and the
courageous demeanour of the richly coloured “_Sarcoramphus Papa_.” As
the ancient Egyptians protected the Percnopteri, which purified the
atmosphere, so also the wanton destruction of Gallinazos is punished
in Peru by a fine (_multa_) which, according to Gay, amounts in some
cities to 300 piastres for every bird. It is a remarkable fact, that
this species of vulture, as was already testified by Don Felix de
Azara, if trained early, will so accustom themselves to the person who
has reared them, that they will follow him on a journey for many
miles, flying after his carriage across the Pampa.

Footnote 73:

p. 211—“_Encloses their rotating bodies_.”

Fontana, in his admirable treatise “on the poison of the viper,” vol.
i. p. 62, mentions that he succeeded in restoring to animation, after
two hours’ immersion in a drop of water, a wheel-animalcule which had
lain in a dried and motionless condition for the space of two years
and a half.[JR]

The so-called reanimation of Rotifera has very recently again been
made a subject of lively discussion, since observations have been
conducted with more exactness and subjected to a stricter criticism.
Baker affirmed that in 1771, he had revived paste-eels which Needham
had given him in the year 1744! Franz Bauer saw his _Vibrio tritici_,
which had lain four years in a dry state, move on being moistened. The
remarkably careful and experienced observer, Doyère,[JS] draws the
following conclusions from his beautiful experiments: that Rotifera
revive, i.e. pass from a motionless state to one of motion, after
being exposed to a cold of 11°.2 Fahr., or to a heat of 113° Fahr.;
that they preserve the property of reviving in dry sand up to a
temperature of 159° Fahr.; but that they lose this property and remain
immoveable if warmed in _moist sand_ to 131° Fahr. only;[JT] and that
the possibility of this so-called revivification is not prevented by
their being exposed to desiccation for twenty-eight days in barometric
tubes, in vacuo, even should chloride of lime or sulphuric acid be
employed.[JU]

Doyère has also seen Rotifera slowly revive after being dried without
sand, (desséchés à nu,) a fact which Spallanzani denies.[JV]
“Desiccation conducted in an ordinary temperature might be open to
many objections which are not perhaps wholly obviated by the
employment of a dry vacuum; but when we observe that the _Tardigrades_
irrevocably perish in a temperature of 131° Fahr. if their tissues are
permeated with water, whereas they can, when dried, support a
temperature that may be estimated at 248° Fahr., we are disposed to
admit that the sole condition required for _animal_ revivification is
the perfect integrity of organic structure and continuity.”

In like manner, the sporules, or germinating cells of cryptogamic
plants, which Kunth compares to the propagation of certain
phanerogamic plants by buds (bulbillæ), retain their power of
germination in the highest temperature. According to the most recent
experiments of Payen, the sporules of a small fungus (Oïdium
aurantiacum), which invests the crumb of bread with a reddish feathery
coating, do not even lose their vegetative powers by being exposed in
closed tubes for half an hour to a temperature of 183° to 208° Fahr.
before being strewn on fresh, unspoilt dough. May not the newly
discovered and wonderful monad (Monas prodigiosa), which causes
blood-like spots in mealy substances, have been mixed with this
fungus?

Ehrenberg, in his great work on Infusoria (p. 492–496), has given the
most complete history of all the observations instituted on the
so-called revivification of Rotifera. He believes, that
notwithstanding all the means of desiccation employed, the
organization-fluid still remains in the apparently dead animal. He
contests the hypothesis of “latent life”; for death, he says, “is not
life in a torpid state, but the absence of life.”

The hybernation or winter-sleep of both warm and coldblooded animals,
as dormice, marmots, sand-martins (_Hirundo riparia_, according to
Cuvier)[JW], and of frogs and toads, affords us evidence of the
diminution, if not of the complete suspension, of the organic
functions. Frogs awakened from their winter-sleep by warmth, can
remain eight times longer under water, without drowning, than frogs in
the breeding season. It seems as if the respiratory functions of the
lungs require a less degree of activity after the long suspension of
their excitability. The circumstance of the sand-martin burying itself
during the winter in marshes, is a phenomenon which, while it scarcely
admits of a doubt, is the more remarkable, because in birds, the
function of respiration is so extremely energetic, that, according to
Lavoisier’s experiments, two sparrows in an ordinary condition will,
in the same time, decompose as much atmospheric air as a
Guinea-pig.[JX] Winter-sleep is not supposed to be general to the
whole species of these sand-martins, but only to some few
individuals.[JY]

As in the frigid zone deprivation of warmth produces winter-sleep in
some animals, so in the torrid regions, within the tropics, an
analogous phenomenon is manifested that has not hitherto been
sufficiently regarded, and to which I have applied the term
_summer-sleep_.[JZ] Drought and a continuous high temperature act like
the cold of winter in reducing excitability. Madagascar, excepting a
very small portion of its southern extremity, lies within the tropics,
and here, as was already observed by Bruguière, the hedgehog-like
Tenrecs (_Centeres_, Illiger), one species of which (_C. ecaudatus_)
was introduced into the Isle of France (20° 9′, latitude), sleep
during excessive heat. The objection advanced by Desjardins, that the
time of their sleep falls within the season of winter in the southern
hemisphere, can scarcely be regarded as applicable in reference to a
country, where the mean temperature of the coldest month is nearly 7°
Fahr. above that of the hottest month in Paris; and this circumstance
cannot therefore change the three months’ summer-sleep of the Tenrec
in Madagascar and Port Louis (Isle of France) into actual hybernation.

In a similar manner, the Crocodile in the Llanos of Venezuela, the
land and water Tortoises on the Orinoco, and the colossal Boa, and
many of the smaller species of serpents, lie torpid and motionless in
the hardened ground, throughout the hot and dry season of the year.
The missionary Gilij relates, that the natives, in seeking the dormant
Terekai (land-tortoises), which lie buried in dry mud to the depth of
16 or 17 inches, are often bitten by serpents suddenly awakened, and
which had buried themselves with the tortoises. An admirable observer,
Dr. Peters, who has only just returned from the eastern coast of
Africa, writes to me as follows: “I could not obtain any certain
information regarding the Tenrec during my short stay in Madagascar,
but I am, on the other hand, well aware, that in the portion of
eastern Africa where I spent several years, different species of
tortoises (Pentonyx and Trionices) remain enclosed for months
together, without food, in the parched and indurated ground, during
the dry season of this tropical country. The _Lepidosiren_ also
remains motionless and coiled up in the hardened earth, from May to
December, wherever the swamps have been dried up.”

We thus meet with an enfeeblement of certain vital functions in
numerous and very different classes of animals, and, what is
peculiarly striking, without the same phenomenon presenting itself in
organisms nearly allied, and belonging to one and the same family. The
northern glutton (Gulo), allied to the badger (Meles), does not, like
the latter, sleep during the winter; whilst, according to Cuvier, “a
Myoxus (Dormouse of Senegal, Myoxus Coupeii) which had probably never
experienced a winter-sleep in its tropical home, fell into a state of
hybernation at the beginning of winter, the first year it was brought
to Europe.” This enfeeblement of the vital functions and vital
activity passes through several gradations, according as it extends to
the processes of nutrition, respiration and muscular movement, or
induces a depression of the cerebral and nervous systems. The
winter-sleep of the solitary bear and of the badger is not attended
with rigidity, and hence the awakening of these animals is easy, and,
as I frequently heard in Siberia, very dangerous to the hunters and
country people. The recognition of the gradation and connection of
these phenomena leads us to the so-called _vita minima_ of the
microscopic organisms, which occasionally fall in the Atlantic in
showers of meteoric dust, and some of which have green ovaries and are
engaged in a self-generating process. The apparent revivification of
the Rotifera and of the siliceous-shelled Infusoria is only the
renewal of long enfeebled vital functions—a condition of vitality
never entirely extinguished, but merely revived by excitation.
Physiological phenomena can only be comprehended by being traced
through the entire series of analogous modifications.

Footnote 74:

p. 211—“_Winged Insects_.”

The fructification of diœcious plants was at one time principally
ascribed to the agency of the wind. It has been shown by Kölreuter,
and also with much ingenuity by Sprengel, that bees, wasps and
numerous small winged insects, are the main agents in this process. I
use the phrase “main agents”, since I cannot regard it as consonant to
nature that fructification should be impossible without the
intervention of these insects, as Willdenow has also fully shewn.[KA]
On the other hand dichogamy, sap-marks, (_maculæ indicantes_),
coloured spots indicating the presence of honey-vessels, and
fructification by insects, appear to be almost inseparable from one
another.[KB]

The statement often repeated since Spallanzani, that the diœcious
common hemp (_Cannabis sativa_), which was introduced into Europe from
Persia, bears ripe seeds without being in the neighbourhood of
pollen-tubes, has been entirely refuted by more recent investigations.
When seeds have been obtained, anthers in a rudimentary state have
been found near the ovarium, and these may have been capable of
yielding some grains of fructifying pollen. Such hermaphrodism is
frequent in the whole family of _Urticeæ_, but a singular and hitherto
unexplained phenomenon is manifested in the forcing-houses at Kew by a
small New Holland shrub, the Cœlebogyne of Smith. This phanerogamic
plant brings forth seeds in England without exhibiting any trace of
male organs, and without the bastard introduction of the pollen of any
other plant. “A species of Euphorbiaceæ,” (?) writes the distinguished
botanist, Jussieu, “the _Cœlebogyne_, which, although but recently
described, has been cultivated for many years in English
conservatories, has several times borne seeds, which were evidently
perfect, since the well-formed embryos they contained have produced
similar plants. The most careful observations have hitherto failed in
discovering the slightest trace of anthers or even pollen in the
flowers, which are diœcious. No male plants of this kind are known to
exist in England. The embryo cannot therefore have come from the
pollen, which is wholly deficient, but must have been formed entirely
in the ovule.”[KC]

In order to obtain a fresh and confirmatory explanation of this
important and isolated physiological phenomenon, I lately addressed
myself to my young friend, Dr. Joseph Hooker, who after having
accompanied Sir James Ross in his Antarctic voyage, has now joined the
great Thibeto-Himalayan expedition. Dr. Hooker wrote to me as follows
from Alexandria, at the close of December, 1847, prior to his
embarkation at Suez: “Our Cœlebogyne still flowers with my father at
Kew, as well as in the Gardens of the Horticultural Society. It ripens
its seeds regularly. I have repeatedly examined it with care, but have
never been able to discover a penetration of pollen utricles into the
stigma, nor any traces of their presence in the latter or in the
style. In my herbarium the male blossoms are in small catkins.”

Footnote 75:

p. 212—“_Like luminous stars_.”

The phosphorescence of the ocean is one of those splendid phenomena of
nature which excite our admiration, even when we behold its recurrence
every night for months together. The ocean is phosphorescent in all
zones of the earth, but he who has not witnessed the phenomenon in the
tropics, and especially in the Pacific, can form but a very imperfect
idea of the majesty of this brilliant spectacle. The traveller on
board a man-of-war, when ploughing the foaming waves before a fresh
breeze, feels that he can scarcely satisfy himself with gazing on the
spectacle presented by the circling waves. Wherever the ship’s side
rises above the waves, bluish or reddish flames seem to flash
lightning-like upwards from the keel. The appearance presented in the
tropical seas on a dark night is indescribably glorious, when shoals
of dolphins are seen sporting around, and cutting the foaming waves in
long and circling lines, gleaming with bright and sparkling light. In
the Gulf of Cariaco, between Cumana and the Peninsula of Maniquarez, I
have spent hours in enjoying this spectacle.

Le Gentil and the elder Forster ascribed these flames to the
electrical friction of the water on the vessel as it glides forward—an
explanation that must, in the present condition of our physical
knowledge, be regarded as untenable.[KD]

There are probably few subjects of natural investigation which have
excited so many and such long-continued contentions as the
phosphorescence of sea-water. All that is known with certainty
regarding this much disputed question may be reduced to the following
simple facts. There are many luminous mollusca which possess the
property when alive of emitting at will a faint phosphoric light;
which is of a bluish tinge in _Nereis noctiluca_, _Medusa pelagica
var._ β,[KE] and in the pipe-like _Monophora noctiluca_, discovered in
Baudin’s expedition.[KF] The luminosity of sea-water is in part owing
to living light-bearing animals, and in part to the organic fibres and
membranes of the same, when in a state of decomposition. The
first-named of these causes of the phosphorescence of the ocean is
undoubtedly the most common and the most widely diffused. The more
actively and the more efficiently that travellers engaged in the study
of nature have learnt to employ powerful microscopes, the more our
zoological systems have been enriched by new groups of mollusca and
infusoria, whose property of emitting light either at will or from
external stimulus has been recognised.

The luminosity of the sea, as far as it depends on living organisms,
is principally owing, among zoophytes, to the Acalephæ (the families
of Medusæ and Cyaneæ), to some Mollusca, and to an innumerable host of
Infusoria. Among the small Acalephæ (Sea-nettles), the _Mammaria
scintillans_ presents us, as it were, with the glorious image of the
starry firmament reflected in the surface of the sea. When full-grown
this little creature scarcely equals in size the head of a pin. The
existence of siliceous-shelled luminous infusoria was first shown by
Michaelis at Kiel. He observed the coruscation of the Peridinium. (a
ciliated animalcule,) of the Cuirass-monad (_Prorocentrum micans_),
and of a rotifer, which he named Synchata baltica,[KG] the same that
Focke subsequently found in the lagoons of Venice. My distinguished
friend and fellow traveller in Siberia, Ehrenberg, succeeded in
keeping two luminous Infusoria of the Baltic alive for nearly two
months at Berlin. I examined them with him in 1832; and saw them
coruscate in a drop of sea-water on the darkened field of the
microscope. When these luminous Infusoria (the largest of which was
only ⅛ and the smallest from ¹⁄₄₈ to ¹⁄₉₆ of a of a Parisian line in
length) were exhausted, and ceased to emit sparks, they would renew
their flashing on being stimulated by the addition of acids or by the
application of a little alcohol to the sea-water.

By repeatedly filtering fresh sea-water, Ehrenberg succeeded in
procuring a fluid in which a large number of these light-emitting
animalcules were accumulated.[KH] This acute observer has found in the
organs of the Photocharis which give off flashes of light (either
voluntarily or when stimulated), a cellular structure of a gelatinous
character in the interior, and which manifests some similarity with
the electric organ of the Gymnotus and the Torpedo. “When the
Photocharis is irritated, in each cirrus a kindling and a gleaming of
separate sparks may be observed, which gradually increase and at
length illuminate the whole cirrus; until the living flame runs also
over the back of this nereid-like animalcule, making it appear under
the microscope like a burning thread of sulphur with a greenish-yellow
light. In the _Oceania (Thaumanthias) hemisphærica_, the number and
position of the sparks correspond accurately, at the thickened base,
with the larger cirri or organs which alternate with them, a
circumstance that merits special attention. The manifestation of this
wreath of fire is an act of vitality, and the whole development of
light an organic vital process, which exhibits itself in Infusorial
animals as a momentary spark of light, and is repeated after short
intervals of rest.”[KI]

The luminous animals of the ocean appear, from these conjectures, to
prove the existence of a magneto-electric light-generating vital
process in other classes of animals besides fishes, insects, mollusca,
and acalephæ. Is the secretion of the luminous fluid which is effused
in some animalcules, and which continues to shine for a long period
_without further influence of the living organism_ (as, for instance,
in Lampyrides and Elaterides, in the German and Italian glow-worms,
and in the South American Cucuyo of the sugar-cane), merely the
consequence of the first electric discharge, or is it simply dependent
on chemical composition? The luminosity of insects surrounded by air
assuredly depends on physiological causes different from those which
give rise to a luminous condition in aquatic animals, fishes, Medusæ,
and Infusoria. The small Infusoria of the ocean, being surrounded by
strata of salt-water which constitutes a powerful conducting medium,
must be capable of an enormous electric tension of their flashing
organs to enable them to shine so vividly in the water. They strike
like the Torpedo, the Gymnotus, and the Electric Silurus of the Nile,
through the stratum of water: whilst electric fishes which, in
connection with the galvanic circuit, are capable of decomposing
water, and of imparting magnetic power to steel needles. (as I showed
more than half a century ago,[KJ] and as John Davy has more recently
confirmed,[KK]) yield no indications of electricity through the
smallest intervening stratum of flame.

The considerations which we have here developed render it probable
that one and the same process operates, alike in the smallest living
organisms invisible to the naked eye, in the contests of the
serpent-like Gymnoti, in the flashing luminous Infusoria which impart
such glorious brilliancy to the phosphorescence of the sea, in the
thunder-cloud and in the terrestrial or polar light (the silent
magnetic flashes), which, caused by an increased tension of the
interior of the earth, are announced, for some hours previously, by
the sudden variations of the magnetic needle.[KL]

Sometimes one cannot, even with high magnifying powers, discover any
animalcules in the luminous water; and yet, wherever a wave breaks in
foam against a hard body, and, indeed, wherever water is violently
agitated, flashes of light become visible. The cause of this
phenomenon depends probably on the decomposing fibres of dead
Mollusca, which are diffused in the greatest abundance throughout the
water. If this luminous water be filtered through finely woven cloths,
the fibres and membranes appear like separate luminous points. When we
bathed at Cumana, in the gulf of Cariaco, and walked naked on the
solitary beach in the beautiful evening air, parts of our bodies
remained luminous from the bright fibres and organic membranes which
adhered to the skin, nor did they lose this light for some minutes. If
we consider the enormous quantity of Mollusca which animate all
tropical seas, we can hardly wonder that sea-water should be luminous,
even where no fibres can be visibly separated from it. From the
endless subdivision of the masses of dead _Dagysæ_ and _Medusæ_ the
whole ocean may, in fact, be regarded as a fluid containing gelatine,
and, as such, luminous and of a nauseous taste; unfit for the use of
man, but capable of affording nourishment to many species of fish. On
rubbing a board with a portion of the _Medusa hysocella_, the surface
thus rubbed recovers its phosphorescence when friction is applied by
means of the dry finger. During my voyage to South America I
occasionally placed a Medusa on a tin plate, and I then observed that
if I struck the plate with another metallic substance the slightest
vibrations of the tin were sufficient to cause the animal to emit
light. How do the blow and the vibrations here act? Is the temperature
momentarily augmented, or are new surfaces presented? or, again, does
some gaseous matter such as phosphuretted hydrogen, exude in
consequence of this impulse, and burn when it comes in contact with
the oxygen of the atmosphere, or with that dissolved in the sea-water,
and by which the respiration of the Mollusca is maintained? This
light-exciting effect of the blow is most remarkable in a cross or
sugar-loaf sea, (_mer clapoteuse_,) where the waves, clashing from
opposite directions, rise in a conical form.

I have seen the ocean, in the tropics, luminous in the most opposite
kinds of weather, but most strongly so before a storm, or in a sultry
and hazy atmosphere with thick clouds. Heat and cold appear to
exercise but little influence on this phenomenon, for, on the Bank of
Newfoundland, the phosphorescence is frequently very brilliant in the
severest winter. Occasionally, too, the sea will be highly luminous
one night, and not at all so on the following, notwithstanding an
apparent identity of external conditions. Does the atmosphere favour
this development of light? or do all the differences observed during
this phenomenon depend on the accidental circumstance of the sea being
more or less impregnated, in some parts, with the gelatinous portions
of mollusca? Perhaps these phosphorescent social animalcules only rise
to the surface under certain conditions of the atmosphere. It has been
asked, why our fresh-water swamps which are filled with polyps are not
phosphorescent. It would appear that, both in animals and plants, a
peculiar mixture of organic particles favours this development of
light; thus, for instance, the wood of the willow is more frequently
found to be luminous than that of the oak. In England, salt-water has
been rendered luminous by mixing herring-brine with it; indeed, it
will be easy for any one to convince himself by galvanic experiments,
that the luminosity of living animals depends on nervous irritation. I
have observed strong phosphorescence emitted from a dying _Elater
noctilucus_, on touching the ganglion of its fore leg with zinc and
silver. Medusæ also occasionally emit a stronger light at the moment
the galvanic circuit is completed.[KM]

Footnote 76:

p. 213—“_Which inhabits the lungs of the Rattlesnake of the tropics_.”

The animal which I formerly named an _Echinorhynchus_, and to which I
even applied the term _Porocephalus_, appears, on a closer inspection,
according to Rudolphi’s better grounded opinion, to belong to the
division of _Pentastoma_.[KN] It is found in the abdominal cavity and
the wide-celled lungs of a species of _Crotalus_, which, in Cumana,
occasionally infests even the interior of houses, and preys on mice.
The _Ascaris lumbrici_[KO] lives beneath the skin of the common
earth-worm, and is the smallest of all the species of Ascaris.
_Leucophra nodulata_, Gleichen’s pearl animalcule, has been observed
by Otto Friedrich Müller in the interior of the reddish _Nais
littoralis_.[KP] It is probable that these microscopic animals are, in
their turn, inhabited by others. All are surrounded by air, deficient
in oxygen, and copiously charged with hydrogen and carbonic acid. It
is extremely doubtful whether any animal could exist in _pure
nitrogen_, although such an opinion did, formerly indeed, seem
warranted with reference to Fischer’s _Cistidicola farionis_, since,
according to Fourcroy’s experiments, the swimming-bladder of fish was
presumed to contain air wholly devoid of oxygen. But the experiments
made by Erman, and confirmed by myself, prove that the
swimming-bladder of fresh-water fish never contains pure nitrogen.[KQ]
In sea fish as much as 0·80 parts of oxygen have been found, while,
according to Biot’s views, the purity of the air depends on the depth
at which the fishes live.[KR]

Footnote 77:

p. 214—“_The united Lithophytes_.”

According to Linnæus and Ellis the calcareous Zoophytes, (among which
Madrepores, Meandrinæ, Astrææ, and Pocilloporæ especially produce
mural coral-reefs,) are inhabited and invested by animalcules, which
were long supposed to be allied to the Nereids belonging to Cuvier’s
Annelida (jointed worms). The anatomy of these gelatinous animalcules
has been made known by the acute and comprehensive researches of
Cavolini, Savigny, and Ehrenberg. We have learned that, in order to
understand the whole organism of the (so-called) rock-building
animals, we must not consider the scaffolding which remains after
their death, namely, the layers of lime formed into delicate lamellæ
by a vital function of secretion, as foreign to the soft membranes of
the food-receiving animal.

Besides our increased knowledge of the wonderful formation of the
living coral-stocks, a more correct view has gradually gained ground
respecting the extensive influence which the coral world has exercised
on the appearance of low island groups above the level of the sea, on
the migration of land-plants, and the successive extension of the
domain of the Floras, and, indeed, in some parts of the ocean, on the
distribution of the human race and of languages.

As minute social organisms the corals play an important part in the
general economy of nature, although they do not, as people began to
believe after Capt. Cook’s voyages of discovery, build up islands or
enlarge continents from almost unfathomable depths of the ocean. They
excite the liveliest interest, whether regarded as physiological
objects, and as illustrating the various gradations of animal form, or
in connection with the geography of plants, and the geognostic
relations of the earth’s crust. According to the comprehensive views
of Leopold von Buch, the whole Jura-formation consists of “large
elevated coral-banks of the ancient world, surrounding at a certain
distance the old mountain chains.”

According to Ehrenberg’s classification,[KS] coral-animals, (in
English works often incorrectly termed coral-insects,) are separable
into the monostomous _Anthozoa_, which are either free and with the
power of detaching themselves, as _Animal-corals_; or are attached in
the manner of plants, as _Phyto-corals_. To the first order
(Zoocorallia) belong the Hydras or Armpolyps of Trembley, the Actiniæ,
radiant with the most splendid colours, and the mushroom-corals; and
to the second order belong the Madrepores, the Astrææ, and the
Ocellinæ. The Polyps of the second order are those which from their
cellular, wave-resisting, wall-works are the principal subject of this
illustration. The wall-work is composed of the aggregate of the
coral-trunks, which, however, do not suddenly lose their combined
vitality, like a dead forest tree.

Every coral-trunk arises by a process of gemmation in accordance with
certain laws, and forms one complete structure, each portion being
formed by a great number of organically distinct individual animals.
In the group of Phyto-corals these cannot separate themselves
spontaneously, but remain united with one another by lamellæ of
carbonate of lime. Hence each coral-trunk by no means possesses a
central point of common vitality.[KT] The propagation of
coral-animals, according to the difference of the orders, is by eggs,
spontaneous division or gemmation. This last kind of propagation
presents the greatest variety of forms in the development of
individuals.

The Coral-reefs (or, as Dioscorides designates them, sea-plants, a
forest of stony-trees, Lithodendra), are of three kinds; namely,
_Coast-reefs_, (shore-reefs, fringing-reefs), which are directly
connected with continental or insular coasts, as on the north-east
coast of New Holland, between Sandy Cape and the dreaded Torres
Straits, and almost all the coral-banks of the Red Sea examined for
eighteen months by Ehrenberg and Hemprich; _Island-surrounding reefs_
(barrier-reefs, encircling-reefs), as at Vanikoro in the small
archipelago of Santa Cruz, north of the New Hebrides, and at
Puynipete, one of the Carolinas; and _Coral-banks surrounding lagoons_
(Atolls or Lagoon-islands). This very natural division and
nomenclature have been introduced by Charles Darwin, and are most
intimately connected with the very ingenious explanation which this
intellectual naturalist has given of the gradual origin of these
wonderful forms. While, on the one hand, Cavolini, Ehrenberg, and
Savigny have completed the scientific anatomical knowledge of the
organization of coral-animals, on the other, the geographical and
geological relations of coral-islands have been investigated, first by
Reinhold and George Forster in Cook’s second voyage, and then, after a
long interval, by Chamisso, Péron, Quoy and Gaimard, Flinders, Lütke,
Beechey, Darwin, d’Urville, and Lottin.

The coral-animals and their stony cellular scaffoldings belong, for
the most part, to the warm tropical seas; and the reefs occur most
frequently in the Southern Hemisphere. Thus we find the Atolls or
Lagoon Islands crowded together in the so-called coral-sea between the
north-east coast of New Holland, New Caledonia, Solomon’s Islands, and
the Louisiade Archipelago; in the group of the Low Islands (Low
Archipelago), eighty in number; in the Fidji, Ellice, and Gilbert
Islands; and in the Indian Ocean, north-east of Madagascar, under the
name of the Atoll group of Saya de Malha.

The great Chagos Bank, whose structure and dead coral-trunks have been
thoroughly investigated by Captains Moresby and Powell, is the more
interesting to us, because we may regard it as a prolongation of the
more northern Laccadive and Maldive Islands. I have previously
directed attention in another work[KU] to the importance of the order
of succession of the Atolls, which are exactly in the direction of a
meridian as far as 7° south lat., in reference to the general mountain
system, and the form of the earth’s surface, in Central Asia. The
meridian-chains, which mark the intersection of many mountain-systems
running from east to west at the great bend of the Thibetian river
Tzang-bo, correspond with the great meridian mountain rampart of the
Ghauts and of the more northern Bolor in further or trans-Gangetic
India. Here lie the parallel chains of Cochin China, Siam, and
Malacca, as well as those of Ava and Arracan, which, after courses of
unequal length, all terminate in the gulfs of Siam, Martaban, and
Bengal. The bay of Bengal appears like an arrested effort of nature to
produce an inland sea. A deep inbreak of the waters, between the
simple western system of the Ghauts, and the very complex eastern
trans-Gangetic system, has swallowed up a great part of the eastern
lowlands, but met with an impediment not so easily overcome in the
early existing and extensive table-land of Mysore.

An oceanic inbreak of this nature has given rise to two almost
pyramidal peninsulas of very different length and narrowness; and the
prolongation of two opposing meridian systems, the mountain system of
Malacca in the east, and the Ghauts of Malabar in the west, manifests
itself in submarine, symmetrical series of islands, on the one side in
the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which are poor in corals, and on the
other in three long-extended archipelagos of Atolls—the Laccadives,
the Maldives, and Chagos. The last, called by mariners the Chagos
Bank, forms a lagoon, belted by a narrow, and already much broken
coral-reef. The length of this lagoon is 88, and its breadth 72 miles.
Whilst the enclosed lagoon is only from 17 to 40 fathoms deep, bottom
was scarcely found at a depth of 210 fathoms at a small distance from
the outer margin of the coral wall, which appears to be now
sinking.[KV] At the coral-lagoon, known as Keeling-Atoll, south of
Sumatra, Captain Fitz-Roy states, that at only 2000 yards from the
reef, no soundings were found with 7200 feet of line.

“The forms of coral, which in the Red Sea rise in thick wall-like
masses, are Mæandrinæ, Astrææ, Favia, Madrepores (Porites),
Pocillopora (Hemprichii), Millepores, and Heteropores. The latter are
among the most massive, although they are branched. The deepest coral
trunks, which magnified by the refraction of light, appear to the eye
to resemble the dome of a cathedral, belong, as far as could be
determined, to Mæandrinæ and Astrææ.”[KW] A distinction must be made
between single and in part free polyp-trunks, and those which form
wall-like rocks.

If the accumulation of building polyp-trunks in some regions is so
striking, it is no less astonishing to observe the perfect absence of
these structures in other and often adjacent regions. Their presence
or absence must be determined by certain, still uninvestigated,
relations of currents, by the partial temperature of the water, and by
the abundance or deficiency of nutriment. That certain
delicate-branched corals, with less calcareous deposition on the side
opposite to the mouth, prefer the stillness of the interior lagoons,
is not to be denied; but this preference for still water must not, as
has too often happened,[KX] be regarded as a peculiarity of the whole
class of these animals. According to the experiences of Ehrenberg and
Chamisso in the Red Sea and in the Marshall Islands, which abound in
Atolls and lie east of the Caroline Islands, and according to the
observations of Captains Bird Allen and Moresby in the West Indies and
in the Maldives, we find that living Madrepores, Millepores, Astræas,
and Mæandrinas, can support “a tremendous surf;”[KY] and indeed seem
to prefer localities the most exposed to the action of storms. The
vital forces of the organism regulating the cellular structure, which
with age acquires a rocky hardness, resist most triumphantly the
mechanical forces,—the shock of moving waters.

In the South Pacific there is a perfect absence of coral-reefs at the
Galapagos and along the whole of the west coast of the New Continent,
notwithstanding their vicinity to the numerous Atolls of the Low
Islands, and the Archipelago of Mendaña or the Marquesas. It is true
that the current of the South Pacific, which washes the coasts of
Chili and Peru. (and whose low temperature I observed in the year
1802,) is only 60°.1 Fahr., while the undisturbed water at the sides
of the cold current is from 81°.5 to 83°.7 Fahr. at Punta Parima,
where it deflects to the west. Moreover at the Galapagos there are
small currents between the islands, having a temperature of only 58°.3
Fahr. But this lower temperature does not prevail further northwards
along the coasts of the Pacific from Guayaquil to Guatimala and
Mexico, neither does it prevail in the Cape de Verd Islands, on the
whole west coast of Africa, or at the small islands of St. Paul, St.
Helena, Ascension, and San Fernando Noronha; yet in none of these are
there coral-reefs.

If this absence of reefs characterises the _western_ coasts of
America, Africa, and New Holland, they are, on the other hand, of
frequent occurrence on the _eastern_ coasts of tropical America, on
the African coast of Zanzibar, and on the southern coast of New South
Wales. The best opportunities I have enjoyed for personally examining
coral banks have been in the Gulf of Mexico, and south of the Island
of Cuba, in the so-called “Gardens of the King and Queen” (_Jardines y
Jardinillos del Rey y de la Reyna_). It was Christopher Columbus
himself who, on his second voyage, in May, 1494, gave this name to
this little group of islands, because from the pleasant association of
the silver-leaved arborescent Tournefortia gnapholoides, of flowering
species of Dolichos, of Avicennia nitida, and mangrove-thickets
(Rhizophora), the coral-islands formed as it were an archipelago of
floating gardens. “_Son Cayos verdes y graciosos llenos de
arboledas_,” says the admiral. On my voyage from Batabano to Trinidad
de Cuba, I remained for several days in these gardens, which lie to
the east of the great Isle of Pines, abounding in mahogany, for the
purpose of determining the longitude of the different _Cayos_.